Waleed bin Attash, the suspected mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole, has reportedly confessed to his involvement during a US military hearing at Guantánamo Bay.

The Associated Press said the Pentagon had revealed the confession today in a transcript it had released of proceedings at a military hearing at the US navy detention centre in Cuba.

Suicide bombers in a small, explosives-rigged craft attacked the US destroyer, harboured in the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000.

Seventeen US sailors were killed, 37 injured and a 35ft-by-36ft gash was left in the craft's hull

According to the released transcript, Attash said he had bought the boat and recruited the people who carried out the bombing.

He said he had "put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior" and also "participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives", according to the transcript.

He also admitted involvement in bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed 213 people, AP reported. The Yemeni national, also known as Tafiq bin Attash, was captured in May 2003 in the southern port city of Karachi, in Pakistan, along with several other people suspected of having links to al-Qaida.

Attash is one of around 70 detainees at Guantánamo Bay facing military tribunals.

Many of the detainees at the camp, which opened in January 2002, have spent years in legal limbo, prompting widespread criticism from human rights campaigners. There has also been scepticism over whether the military tribunals afford defendants a fair hearing.

The US supreme court ruled last year that the detainees were entitled to protection under the Geneva conventions and, therefore, to a fair trial.

However, fewer than half of the 775 men brought to the camp have been released. A further 110 have been deemed to be ready for release, but around 250 inmates still have no apparent prospect of getting a hearing.